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Nosy the Fluff was settling into its new life with Torchwood very well, or so its new human friends thought. Ianto had said he didn’t know how they’d ever managed without a Fluff on the team. The furry, snakelike alien was glad about that, because it meant it would get to stay in this strange but fascinating place, where there was so much to learn about and to discover. There was plenty of good food too, and a delicious drink called kofi, or something like that, which made Nosy feel fitter and healthier than it could ever remember feeling. Its fur had never been thicker or glossier, and it wondered if it wasn’t also getting smarter by the day.
It was certainly thinking a lot more than it used to on its home planet, because there was so much more here to think about, things it would never have imagined if it hadn’t seen them for itself, like water taps, and lights, and doors, and bathrooms, and this device called a television that Nosy’s friends had set up for it in its play area. It wasn’t allowed to watch ALL the time, there were things on the telly, as the humans often called the device, that weren’t suitable for a Fluff to watch, although Nosy didn’t know why that was. It didn’t really mind, because there were other things that were supposed to help children learn about the world they lived in, and while Nosy wasn’t a human child, it did very much want to learn about this planet it now lived on.
Right now, on the television screen, a strange green creature with long arms was singing something about being green, how it wasn’t easy to be that colour because it meant blending in with a lot of other, ordinary things. Nosy really didn’t understand that, because sometimes it was good to blend in and be unnoticed. That was why it chose to be green and brown when it first arrived on earth; it had made hiding so much easier. Other times though, being green made you stand out; it all depended on where you lived, and down here in the Torchwood Hub, where everything was mostly grey, a nice, bright green could be seen very clearly indeed.
Of course, unlike the creature singing on the television, who seemed by now to have decided being green wasn’t so bad after all, Nosy didn’t have to be green if it didn’t want to be. It wondered if the green creature would have been happier if it could change colour at will, the way a Fluff could, because then no matter where it went, it would be able to stand out and be noticed.
Not that being noticed was always so wonderful, because when Nosy had first found itself on this strange, unfamiliar planet, it had tried being other colours, and humans had chased it, thrown things at it, and fired what it now knew to be guns at it, which hadn’t been at all nice. Ianto had told Nosy that the humans had been scared of it, because it was so big and they’d never seen anything like it before. They had thought it might attack them, so they’d attacked first. That seemed a bit silly to Nosy. If IT was scared of something, it slithered away from danger and hid by camouflaging itself.
There was certainly a lot to be said for having a choice in the way it looked, as Fluffs did. Even its human friends could choose to wear clothes that were different colours, so they didn’t always look exactly the same. Well, except for Jack, who always seemed to dress in the same things. So, perhaps the green creature did have a point. At the very least, Kermit had given Nosy a great deal to think about.
Turning the television off, Nosy went to see if Ianto might be making kofi soon, because serious thinking was best done over a drink and a snack.
The End